Empirical identification of care process on the basis of its relation with nursing practice

Introduction. Nursing is the area of theoretical and practical activities based on the results of scientific studies and philosophical assumptions
emerge in care process. This domain of nursing performance systematically changes what is determined to some extend by the
development of nursing practice.

Aim of the study. The aim of the study was to present the core of care process seen at the operational perspective from the point of view
of nurses who work at hospital wards with paying extraordinary attention on concern in caring.

Material and methods. The study performance was conducted by the use of diagnostic survey method with self-constructed questionnaire.
The content of answers was taken out for analysis related to the question “What is care process in your opinion?”. Declarations of
participant conditioned by graphic presentation of five face expression drawn into the structure of Delighted–Terrible Faces (D-T) Scale
(Andrews and Withey 1974, 1976) were also analysed. The task for participants was to project professional nursing activity towards patient
with particular face expression after one minute exposition. The study consisted of 324 nurses who worked at hospitals in Lublin.

Results. The analysis of collected data in the area of defining care process allowed to select the following categories of answers: groups of
care activities, reception of nursing care and detailed care activities. The highly ranked activities in the area of nursing performance were:
helping (33.33%), care taking (25.9%) and supporting (13.89%). In accordance to respondents caring understood as nursing performance
consists in education of patients (8.95%), helping with self-care activities (6.79%) and hygienic activities (5.86%) that are taken towards sick
people (59.57%), all care receivers (14.81%) and healthy people (9.26%). The deeper analysis of the core of care process was made on the
basis of visual exposition of faces of patients that showed independently from face expression proposed activities were almost the same
— conversation with patient, diagnosing condition of patient and it complete understanding of caring.

Conclusions. Using different ways of cognition of the area of care process in practice allowed to discover the hidden activities of nurse,
mostly of caring nature.

Nursing Topics 2011; 19 (2): 244–252